A KILLER got away with murdering his housemate by hiding his body in a brick wall for four years – before his conscience eventually got the better of him.

Sebastain Bendou helped to murder Christophe Borgye and stash his body in a wall [CAVENDISH]

Sebastian Bendou stabbed and battered his fellow tenant to death in 2009 before stashing his corpse in a homemade brick tomb topped with concrete.

With the help of an accomplice, the 36-year-old, managed to escape suspicion as police treated the victim's disappearance as a routine missing persons inquiry and assumed airline steward Christophe Borgye, 36, had returned to his native France.

But hotel worker Bendou could not live with the "strain" of his guilt and in May last year he suddenly travelled 200 miles from his new home in Dumfries, Scotland back to Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, where he carried out the killing.

He called police and led them to the house where they broke open the tomb inside a shed to find it contained a low brick wall used to hide the corpse with three separate layers of concrete placed over the body, as well as a claw hammer and two knives wrapped in a duvet and tarpaulin.

It emerged that during the attack, Mr Borgye was lured into a specially prepared "kill room" before he was was stabbed twice and hit with the claw end of the hammer eight times with massive force which had caused his skull to shatter.

Mr Borgye was reported missing to police by a work colleague in May 2009 but enquiries at the time led officers and his family to believe he had left the country.

Christophe Borgye lived with the two killers [CAVENDISH]

Christophe Borgye was a wholly innocent man and the fear and pain he must have suffered in his dying minutes is unimaginable.

Mr Justice Alistair McDuff

His accomplice, father of three Dominik Kocher, 35, from New Abbey in Dumfries, Scotland, planned the killing and was found guilty at an earlier hearing and jailed for life with a minimum recommendation he serve 23 years.

Bendou carried on living at the house until August 2012 when he and Kocher moved to Scotland - with a warning to the new tenants that they were told not to go into the outbuilding as the landlord used it to store personal property.

He eventually went to police fearing Kocher was about to "eliminate" him. In a statement he initially said he killed the victim in self-defence.

He said he was "very scared" and added: "I'm confessing now because I felt it was too much for my mind and I want some peace."

At the trial Bendou said he had been "indoctrinated" by Kocher’s story that Mr Borgye was a secret agent sent by "the Americans".

Bendou was found guilty of murder by Preston Crown Court yesterday and ordered to serve a minimum of 14 years in prison.

His guilty plea to manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility was rejected by the prosecution.

Passing sentence the judge Mr Justice Alistair McDuff told Bendou: "This was a wicked and cowardly attack but you already know that because it preyed heavily on your mind over the next four years.

"If you had been able to live with your conscience this would have been a crime which would have gone undetected.

"Christophe Borgye was a wholly innocent man and the fear and pain he must have suffered in his dying minutes is unimaginable.

"This was wickedness beyond comprehension.

"But I also take into account the fact that it was it was your conscience your inability to cope mentally with the horrors of this event which led to the discovery of this crime."

Richard Riley, Senior Crown Prosecutor with the CPS Mersey-Cheshire, added: "We may never know the reason why Bendou and Kocher killed Mr Borgye on that fateful day - the picture is too murky.

"But it seems likely that money was at the heart of it. Kocher bought knives in the days leading up to the killing and tarpaulin, bricks and cement. We've always maintained these were used in the killing and to then bury the body.